


Owned by Fire

by Andartha



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:38:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andartha/pseuds/Andartha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After he banishes his wife Ursa, Fire Lord Ozai takes a slave to warm his sheets. The return of the Avatar...changes things. Ozai redemption and dark romance - but it's NOT "tru lurve" that saves the day. OFC. Warnings!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Owned by Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Words: 2387  
> Characters: Ozai / OC  
> Genre: Drama / Adventure / Romance  
> Rating: NC-17  
> Warning: Explicit torture, slavery, non-con, swearing and bits of sappy emoness. Het.  
> Summary: After he banishes his wife Ursa, Fire Lord Ozai picks a slave to warm his sheets. 
> 
> Starts about 7 years before the events in A:TLA. 
> 
> Can be read as a stand-alone vignette
> 
> Disclaimer: Avatar: The last Airbender and all the characters therein are the intellectual property of Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and I, like all the other fans, only get to play with them every once in a while. I do not make a profit from this story.

There are moments where she forgets she is his slave.

It’s been four years now since the night he banished his wife, Ursa.

Four years since he took her as his personal pleasure slave and she’s been with him every night.

 

The first year, he hardly talked to her at all, only harshly ordering her how to move to better please him or gently whispering promises of cruelties yet to come into her ear.

Watching her tense up as she tries to prepare herself for the pain and humiliation, only to fail in the end, amuses him greatly.

Once he’s broken down her defences and her defiance has ceded to obedience (most of the time), his satisfaction is thick in the air.

  

The second year, as she desperately tries to find ways to distract him, he discovers that she can please him in more ways than just the one.

Muscles sore from vigorous exercise (he keeps himself as trim as he used to be when he was a general in his fathers’ army) yield to her gentle fingers, almost instantly relaxing into supple warmth.

When he discovers that she is waterbending to achieve what no other of his other attendants has ever been able to do, he whips her like he has never done before.

After she recovers, he makes certain she knows that if any harm befalls him, the remains of her people will be annihilated. It is an effective blackmail. But from that day on, she is also his personal healer, making sure his powers of recovery from even the most vicious and bloody training-fights are the awe of his entire court.

 

One night in the third year, he doesn’t bother to chain her back to her place at the foot of his bed after he is done with her. He just pulls her close and she falls asleep in his arms. She wakes up the next morning with him possessively curled around her, her backside moulded to his front, skin on skin. His heartbeat and his calm, deep breaths soothe her back to sleep.

The next time she wakes, it is because he has started nibbling on her ear, the sensation tickling and pleasant. Once he’s sure she’s awake, he starts to caress her body, his hands deft and strong as he strokes her breasts. For the first time, the arousal she feels as he fucks her does not feel like a betrayal her body is inflicting on her soul.

  

She is surprised in the fourth year, when he asks for her advice. It is nothing big. Just some bit about how best to preserve fish caught near the South Pole, so it will keep longer and can be used for trade. She knows he will also use the knowledge to improve provisions for his troops, and tells him as much. Tells him no.

His anger flares and his fingers, gently stroking her shoulder just a moment before, now are bruising her flesh, but her heart and soul have not eroded so far that she has forgotten who she is…and neither has she forgotten who he is and what he has done.

So she taunts him, telling him that the Fire Nation can’t be THAT strong and that their civilization must be severely LACKING if they can’t figure out how to preserve fish in better ways than a bunch of “dirty, stinking barbarians” does it.

It’s the first argument he has lost with her and he leaves, slamming the door behind him.

Later, when indeed the quartermasters and cooks in his army have figured out a better way to preserve the fish, he makes her pay for her disobedience. She can’t sit for a week and has to sleep on her belly, her behind and back smart so badly, but the memory of him slamming that door in frustration makes her smile whenever she remembers it.

It is not the last time she defies him, even though he makes her pay dearly each time. Never so dearly though that it would break her; for where would be the fun in that?

He never allows her to heal herself after he punishes her…but he does feed her sweets. And somehow, from then on, he keeps asking her for her view every once in a while.

As he asks her, it does not escape him that she’s fairly knowledgeable about all things concerning his court.

The servants and attendants that come to his quarters gossip like crazy, never thinking much about Ozai’s personal slave and so, even though she never leaves his quarters, she is fairly informed about anything going on in the court and in the capital. Even some scarce information about what’s happening in the rest of the world reaches her ears.

Although of course he double-checks anything she tells him, in time she often is the first person he asks when it comes to questions like what gesture might settle a feud within the stone-masons guild or for what reason a wealthy family is reluctant to marry their daughter to a young court noble.

If she figures the answer won’t bring harm to those who oppose the Fire Nation, she will answer him.

When he acts on the information she has supplied and the results are good, he will bring her small presents.   

It is not for the sake of these gifts that she listens to the gossip though. To her who she owns nothing but is owned herself, the tidbits she gleans about her people’s welfare are her most treasured possessions.

 

With time and familiarity, the simple lines of their beginning blur and what was once an uneven fight has now turned into an intricate dance. Often, when late at night the lights have been dimmed, and they lie together in bed, talking, his hand resting comfortably on her hip, she sometimes forgets she is his slave.

The nightmares she has of him are replaced with nightmares of loosing herself.

It takes a while for her to realize, but the scraps of kindness and tenderness he has been feeding her have given her hope.

Hope, that maybe, fire and water can coexist.

Hope, that one day, he might change and return peace to the world.

Is her hope true? Or is it a poison, slowly eating away at her, at what she believes, until all that remains is an empty shell? She can no longer tell the difference.

Where his cruelty has failed to break her, these moments of happiness might actually succeed.

Days blend into weeks, weeks into months.

A quiet complacency has come over her.  Fiery disagreements give way to gentle teasing.

Where once he would have bound her and then flogged her, he now playfully swats at her bottom and quips back.

Where once he would have called her a filthy whore, who got no better than she deserved, he now whispers sweet nothings in her ear.

The cold, triumphant smirks have been replaced by warm and welcoming smiles and she finds her heart melting at the sight.

It takes just a few short hours to kill her hope, to purge the poison.

All it takes is hearing about how he challenged his son to an Agni Kai for speaking out of turn and then, with his powerful firebending skills, proceeded to maim the 13 year old boy.

She marvels at Prince Zuko’s integrity (valuing the lives of his soldiers more than an easy victory!), his courage (speaking out in front the assembled military leaders, even though he is but a boy…) and last but far from least at his love and loyalty towards a father who deserves neither.

Little does Ozai know that when he burns his son’s face, he also burns the illusion that he can ever be anything but the nemesis of all she holds dear.

The embers of her hatred and her anger for her abuser, her OWNER, her ENEMY, flame into new life, burning brighter and hotter than ever. It is a purifying fire that scorches her heart to ashes, leaving her with icy clarity as to what her path is.

That night, when her lover comes to their bedroom, she showers him with her contempt, hitting him with derisive epitaphs as hard and as fast as she can.

“You are such worthless, lowlife SCUM.”

“Did you wank off with your spineless sycophants over how MANLY you are after proving your immense prowess by beating up your not-yet-of-age son?”

“Your mother must have fucked a roach-slug to produce something as upstanding as you. Oh right, that roach-slug was ugly old Az-fuck-on, wasn’t it?”

“Asshole”

“Jerkface”

“Shithead”

For a few heartbeats, he just looks at her, stunned. Then, fast as lightning, he strikes her down.

She falls and rolls with the blow, coming up bouncing. Her nose bleeds, but she just smirks and spits in his face.

The fight is short and ugly. She attacks ferociously with a strength that belies her smaller frame, fuelled by blinding hot rage and hatred. But in the end, he is stronger than her and better versed in the art of fighting. And while her fury burns hot, his is cold and calculating.

He doesn’t care that her left arm is broken when he undresses and then chains her. He threads her shackles through iron rings set high up into the wall of his chamber and then pulls them tight so she has to stand on her toes if she doesn’t want her broken arm to bear her weight. 

Her back is to him, exposed. It is a position he hasn’t put her in for almost two years.

And they both know, this time he will not hold back.

She has not only crossed a limit, she has thrown her transgression in his face, proud and unrepentant. He no longer owns her.

He no longer dictates her actions.

She is free. 

And for that, he will break her.

Here and now, his weapon of choice is a whip, supple and thin. He sends its’ tip licking along her back, slowly at first, with small blossoms of pain melding into a flowering meadow of agony. She is used to this. When the pain rises over her threshold, her breathing grows sharp and jagged, but she still has will left and forces herself not to cry out as she usually would.

The rhythm of his blows picks up the pace, the force of his strikes finally breaking her skin. He sees that she is shaking now, trying to hold up her weight while standing on her toes and failing. It fills him with grim satisfaction.

When she finally loses her battle against gravity and sags in her chains, bringing her weight to bear on her arms, one good, one broken, she cannot hold in the small moan escaping her lips. It is too little to satisfy his need for reprisal.

The rage he had felt when she had defied him burns steady in his gut, chilling him.

The shredded skin on her back is covered with blood that turns black as it dries and all he can think of is how the night before, he had watched her as she slept in his arms, her lips curved in a gentle smile, and how he had felt truly at peace for the first time in ages.

It doesn’t matter.

His word is law.

His will is destined to shape the world.

No one would be allowed to stand against him.

She can hardly breathe. The screams she keeps bundled up inside, trying to be brave, are strangling her.

She knows he will stop whipping her eventually and find some other way to torment her, but still it takes her a moment to adjust when the lashes cease.

For a short moment, all that can be heard is their breathing, her breaths short and gasping, his slow and deep and forceful. She flinches when he moves in and touches her broken arm. It is a gentle touch, almost a caress. His fingers wander down to her shoulder, warm. She tries to jerk away, despite the agony that cascades from her fractured arm through her whole body. But the chains are too short. His fingers resume their path, finally reaching the torn and bruised skin and she quivers in anguish, biting her lips bloody to keep the screams in.

Touching her, he calls fire, bending it so that it warms his hands. When his softly stroking fingers reach the bloody ruins of her back, he bends the fire more and warmth turns to searing heat. Worn out and worn down by the suffering he has inflicted so far, it takes her a moment to react. But as smoke starts to curl up beneath his hands and the scent of burnt flesh fills the air, she starts to scream. It takes few minutes, but soon, he hears what he has been waiting for. She is begging him. Once again, she is his.

After he is finished with her, instead of keeping her in his quarters as usual, he has her thrown into a small, damp prison cell beneath the palace.

It is the first time in four years that they are apart.

He tells himself he does not care, yet he takes no other woman to his bed. He does not send her sweets (he will never again indulge a slave that way), but he does see to it that she is attended by the best healers in the capital, one of them another waterbender who belongs to one of the Fire Nations’ wealthiest merchants. It would be a pity if that pretty skin scarred.

When she is finally returned to him, she is empty-eyed and obedient. She follows his every order without hesitation, even smiling at him when he asks for it. At first he is satisfied, but with time, satisfaction yields to frustration. The spark that warmed him has gone out. He has broken her and yet, he cannot discard her like he should.

.

.

.

It does not matter anymore to her what she once was.

Her heart is a hollowed-out husk, her self burned to fallow ashes.

She is there, but not THERE.

She has reached her goal.

She is safe.

She will never again forget that she is nothing but his slave.

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note:
> 
> Not to put a fine point to it, this is a pretty abusive relationship. And for most women (or men for that matter; it’s rare but it happens), if they were in a similar situation as the female character, I’d tell them to get out, ASAP. Since the female character has been enslaved, this option is not open to her.
> 
> In this story, the female character thinks that her abuser also has feelings for her…..and since this is a story, she is right. 
> 
> In real life, abused women will also tell themselves that their abuser has feelings for them (“He loves me, he cares for me….it’s just that….”) and more often than not, they’re wrong. 
> 
> But even if an abuser DOES feel something for his victim, that doesn’t mean he’ll stop, because he thinks that somehow, what he does is justified (“She’s been asking for it, not doing XYZ as I told her. It’s her fault. She made me mad.”). Which kinda explains why abuse has a tendency to continue for so long. A good book that explores the psychology of abusers more in depth is Lundy Bancroft’s “Why does he do that?”.
> 
> People frequently believe that abusers have a pretty low self-esteeem.
> 
> A lot of the time, that’s wrong.
> 
> A lot of abusers (like our Fire Lord here) have been brought up to think that their needs and their claims have a natural priority over everybody else’s (or at least over those of their partners). (This goes on a national level too…..just look at how the Fire Nation wants to conquer the world because they think that being on top is their rightful place).
> 
> Ozai feels entitled to everything he can subdue and conquer and so he thinks he has a RIGHT to slap down on any kind of rebellion and to take anything he wants. 
> 
> He doesn’t. 
> 
>  
> 
> Also Soundtrack! 
> 
> I'm trying to put together a kind of soundtrack for this story and from the moment on where Kian defies Ozai to the end of this chapter, I think I have found the perfect song: Within Temptation's "What have you done now?". It's a duet between a man and a woman and I think it fits perfectly. Here's an excerpt from the lyrics:
> 
> Female voice:
> 
> Would you mind if I hurt you?
> 
> Understand that I need to
> 
> Wish that I had other choices
> 
> than to harm the one I love
> 
> Male voice:
> 
> What have you done now?
> 
> I know I'd better stop trying
> 
> You know that there's no denying
> 
> I won't show mercy on you now
> 
> Both:
> 
> I know I should stop believing
> 
> I know that there's no retrieving
> 
> It's over now
> 
> Female voice:
> 
> What have you done?
> 
> Male voice:
> 
> What have you done now?
> 
> Both:
> 
> I, I've been waiting for someone like you
> 
> But now you are slipping away
> 
> What have you done now
> 
> Why, Why does fate make us suffer
> 
> There's a curse between us
> 
> Between me and you
> 
> …
> 
> Female voice:
> 
> Would you mind if I killed you?
> 
> Would you mind if I tried to?
> 
> Cause you have turned into my worst enemy
> 
> You carry hate that I feel
> 
> …
> 
> Both:
> 
> I, I've been waiting for someone like you
> 
> But now you are slipping away
> 
> Male voice:
> 
> What have you done now
> 
> Both:
> 
> Why, Why does fate make us suffer
> 
> There's a curse between us
> 
> Between me and you
> 
> …
> 
> Both:
> 
> I will not fall
> 
> Won't let it go
> 
> We will be free
> 
> When it ends
> 
> …


End file.
